I didn’t know that Ramadan was supposed to end today and I am supposed to break my fast. I thought that I had two more days and so I am not ready to stop the fast. Plus I broke my fast 2 days during the fasting period and so I feel like I should fast one extra day to make up for it. I finish 1 Chronicles today. I don’t read the names of every person in 1 Chronicles. I don’t feel that I need to. The lesson to be learned for me in first Chronicles is accountability.
My school will be audited this year. People who receive grants based on economics fail to understand the importance of documentation. They don’t have any skin in the game so they feel that documentation slows them down from doing the job. The truth is that documentation and accountability reveals their waste and lack of responsibility.
I read in Chronicles about the care and diligences that people were instructed to account for all the resources and people in the kingdom. All families are recorded; the number of fighting men is always documented. The mothers of the kings are recorded. The names of the Kings are recorded and the length of time they reigned and this was all done 5000 years ago. I think about the extension that I filed for my taxes. It is time that I filed my taxes and assumes responsibility for my obligation to my government. It is time for the people with whom I work to assume responsibility for all the goods and services they have received from the government. The government is not harassing them but ensuring that they are good stewards of taxpayer’s dollars. If the audit frightens them it is probably due to guilt.
I read the story again of how David was told that he wouldn’t be building the temple of the Lord. He knew that his son had been designated by God to complete that task. He knew that his son was young and inexperienced and so he gathered all the things that he needed to assist and support his son in doing what had to be done.
Solomon spent 7 years overseeing the building of the temple. David provided the plans and a lot of the materials but Solomon still needed to trade with other leaders to get the right materials to finish the job. Solomon oversaw the building of the temple, which took 13 years. These facts give me hope.
I started a non-profit organization St. Carrie’s Center, which I named after my mother. I conceived on the idea 8 years before I established the organization. Planning the concept of the organization helped me to cope with my overwhelming grief after my mother passed. It was a way of acknowledging her sacrifices.
One day I was looking out of the window passing judgment on a neighbor who was unmarried and pregnant with her fifth child. I made the remark that I didn’t like men enough to allow one of them to get me pregnant that many times. My mother was sitting on the couch across from me. She calmly spoke and said “You take too much credit for yourself” When my back to her and still facing the window, I rolled my eyes in my head. I asked, “ Pray tell Mother, whatever do you mean” She ignored my sassiness and tied a knot on the thread and started to sew the button on my brother’s shirt. “The people who were suppose to love you did their job. You have always known that you were loved. The people who were supposed to love that child failed her. That is the difference between you and her, love. You walk in the footsteps of the women who came before you.”
Fast-forward 14 years later. I am finishing my masters program. I come home from my internship, dejected, tired and totally confused. Again, my mother is sitting on the couch sewing but this time it is my house and my couch. I am going through a divorce with two babies. I tell my mother about my week. One mother beat her 8-year-old son naked and pierced his penis with the prong on a belt buckle; he had to be taken by ambulance to the hospital. One mother gave her daughter to her mother to raise and the little girl’s IQ dropped from 130 to 70 in 5 years. This middle child was a shade darker than her two sisters, hair was about an inch shorter, which she twirled nervously, and she sucked her thumb. Her mother rejected her because she felt she was less attractive than the other two girls. The last child was 5 years old and selectively mute. Her 15-year-old mother and boyfriend had burned her with cigarettes when she was 2 and she stopped talking to strangers. I couldn’t believe that women like this existed.
I told my mother that she had to help me. I didn’t know what to do. My mother spoke” I am here to organize your household, love your babies and cook your food. Everything else is on you,” I told my mother that “nothing had prepared me for this.” Our eyes met and we spoke the language without words. Her look told me that she had told me that I was too “tenderhearted” to be a psychologist and work with emotionally wounded children and families. My look told her that we were past that now. I spoke first. “ I am a California Scholar at the top of my class. I have received all this grant money that I can’t pay back.” She spoke” What would you have me do child. You are the one with the education. I can’t live your life” I replied
” You are my Mother and I expect you to help me” My mother put down her sewing for a minute and looked at me and sighed. These are the words of my mother with a fifth grade education:
“Start with love. You have been given a lot of love and it is time for you to give some back. You have read more books than anybody I know and whether you realized it or not you have learned some things. Uses that stuff you have learned in books. Then you end with love”.
I stared at my mother. I don’t know what I expected. “You mean if I give them love no one will know that I don’t know what I am doing”. She put down her sewing again. “If you give them love no one will care that you don’t know what you are doing” So here I am Momma giving them love until that day that I leave this world. Thank you Ramadan for the memories.
